Blind-Date Baby by Fiona Harper Page A

she’d have laughed herself silly at the idea, but now…
    No more lonely days. No more struggling to do everything on her own. Someone to talk to when she was down. Someone to laugh with when she was happy. Suddenly her soul ached for those things.
    She pulled away from him and stood up, pressing trembling fingers to her lips.
    ‘I…I don’t know, Noah. I need to think about this. I’d like to go home, please.’
     
    Her heart was pounding so fast that Grace considered collapsing onto the top step and resting against the front door to her flat for a moment before she went inside. In fact, that was afabulous idea. She turned and slumped against the door, letting gravity pull her into an untidy heap on the landing.
    The ride home had been excruciating. She just hadn’t known what to say. How could she have chit-chatted after a proposal of marriage? A proposal she hadn’t actually turned down. Was she mad?
    When the car had pulled up in the alley behind The Coffee Bean, where the back entrance to her flat was, she’d grabbed her overnight bag and bolted. And now she was sitting here, her heart rate returning to normal, and she still didn’t know what to do.
    Her flat was her space, her sanctuary, but she had absolutely no desire to go inside at the moment. The first thing that would greet her when she opened the door would be the photo of Rob in his uniform, holding Daisy just a few days after she’d been born.
    She sighed. When they’d married, she and Rob had felt so grown up. And yet, when she looked back at her photo albums now, they both looked impossibly young, little more than children themselves. For goodness’ sake, Daisy was almost the same age as Grace had been when she’d got married. Just the thought of Daisy with a ring on her finger and a bump under her T-shirt was enough to make Grace break out in a cold sweat.
    Back then, she and Rob had been so convinced that what they had would last for ever, but what really would have happened if he’d still been alive? Would they have been the perfect family of her daydreams, or would they be living in separate houses, fighting over custody arrangements and child support?
    How could she walk past that picture of Rob when she was thinking like this? She couldn’t block him out and pretend he’d never existed, not when she’d spent all these years keeping him alive by being the Grace he’d fallen in love with.
    She’d never doubted any of this before, not even in hertwenties, when she’d dated quite a bit and had still been full of hope that she’d find someone new to fill the void in her life. But none of them had measured up to fun-loving, generous Rob, and twenty-something men had a habit of running scared from a ready-made family.
    It had just confirmed what she’d known all along—Rob had been her soulmate and she wasn’t going to find another man like him. Just wasn’t going to happen. So she’d given up the search.
    But now she’d found Noah.
    He was nothing like her darling Rob, and any relationship she embarked upon with him would be totally different from her marriage. Noah wanted companionship, a partnership built on mutual respect. Those criteria hadn’t even been on her radar when she’d accepted Rob’s proposal. It had been about love and destiny and forever. Only forever hadn’t come. And now she had to decide what to do with the time she had left, rather than treading water and pretending she had an endless supply of days left to her.
    Respect. Compatibility. Support.
    It all sounded so logical. Yet the Grace inside her who liked fishnets, tequila and rock concerts was yelling no and shaking her head. Was she just being childish?
    Grace rubbed her hands over her face.
    The scary thing was, part of her wanted to say yes. Part of her wanted all those things. And, if she decided she could move towards this idea of a more mature, balanced view of love, what did that mean for her marriage to Rob? Would she be crossing it out and